The Bush administration is no longer debating whether to launch
a war against Iraq. The only question now is which empty gestures to make
before attacking.
Some officials, according to The New York Times, think the
United States should "seek to involve the United Nations one last time to
bolster the case they want to make in Congress against Saddam Hussein." In
particular, they want to demand that Saddam readmit the U.N. inspectors who
are supposed to verify that he is keeping his promise to eschew weapons of
mass destruction.
No one expects him to comply, of course. Even if he did, it
wouldn't matter. According to Vice President Dick Cheney, "A return of
inspectors would provide no assurance whatsoever of (Saddam's) compliance
with U.N. resolutions."
The point of insisting on inspections is not to make inspections
possible but to "bolster the case" for war. The idea is that Saddam's
continued, predictable refusal to admit inspectors the administration
considers useless will persuade members of Congress to back military action.
At the same time, the White House insists it does not really
need permission from Congress. "One official suggested that the statements
indicating that new Congressional approval was not necessary were a way of
preparing the ground for talks with lawmakers," the Times reports. In other
words, the president's attitude is: " Whatever . I'll do
what I want."
The more cautious members of the Bush administration are thus
reduced to arguing that the U.S. should go through one charade -- insisting
that Saddam allow inspections, and
this time we really mean it
-- to facilitate another: "consulting" with legislators who have
no real say about a decision the White House has already made.
I'm not the only one who feels like he missed the part where the
president explained why we're going to war with Iraq. "We Americans don't
make unprovoked attacks against other nations," House Majority Leader Dick
Armey said a few weeks ago. "As long as he (Saddam) behaves himself within
his own borders, we should not be addressing any attack or resources against
him."
Given Saddam's brutal treatment of his own people, Armey
presumably meant "as long as he misbehaves within his
own borders." But his basic point was sound: Since war involves killing
people, many of them innocent, it requires a justification based on
self-defense.
Cheney, acting as Bush's proxy, took a stab at it the other day.
His speech opened with a startling reference to "dictators (who) obtain
weapons of mass destruction and are prepared to share them with terrorists,"
but he offered no evidence that Saddam is such a dictator.
If the Iraqi government really were helping terrorists launch a
chemical, biological or nuclear attack on the U.S., that would be a
compelling justification for "pre-emptive action." But such a scenario seems
to be more a matter of speculative fiction than solid intelligence.
Cheney's other warnings about the dangers posed by Iraq likewise
have a feeling of unreality about them. He imagines a Saddam armed to the
teeth with "the whole range of weapons of mass destruction," "who could then
be expected to seek domination of the entire Middle East, take control of
great portions of the world's energy supplies, directly threaten America's
friends throughout the region and subject the United States or any other
nation to nuclear blackmail."
If Iraq is such a threat, it's puzzling that "America's friends"
do not seem to share Cheney's alarm. Why is the United States, 6,000 miles
from Baghdad, more worried than Saddam's neighbors?
Critics such as former chief weapons inspector Scott Ritter
argue that the administration has greatly exaggerated Iraq's ability to
develop chemical, biological and (especially) nuclear weapons without
detection. In any case, possessing such weapons is not tantamount to using
them.
Like Iraq, North Korea -- which President Bush included in the
"axis of evil" he decried last January -- is run by a bellicose,
totalitarian regime. Unlike Iraq, it has more than the debatable potential
to develop nuclear weapons. It is believed to have at least a few actual
bombs. Yet the Bush administration is not talking about pre-emptive action
against North Korea.
One reason may be that North Korea's leaders are considered
unlikely to use those bombs, since going nuclear would invite a devastating
response and jeopardize their power. Still in charge a dozen years after his
ill-fated invasion of Kuwait, Saddam also seems to have a pretty strong
survival instinct.
